Home-Based Craft Store Goes Out of Business When No One Can Figure Out Which Door to Use

 Mainely Threads Quilting & Craft is going out of business because potential customers have been confused as to where, exactly, they need to go to gain entrance to the business.

  “I went around to the side door and there was a sign that said ‘Please use door in back,'” Pam Auclair said. However, when she tried to use the backdoor, she was once again unable to enter the business.

“I could see an older couple in there watching television, and it definitely didn’t look like a craft store, so I just turned around and left. It was odd because it was the only door shoveled out from the snow.”

Others expressed similar frustrations trying to find their way into the craft store to give it their business.

“I pulled up to park in the parking lot, and a woman came out from the building next door and told me I couldn’t park there. Started yelling at me in French,” Greg Tarreo said. “There weren’t any other places to park so I drove to the Hobby Lobby.”

One lucky patron found the proper entrance to the store, but unfortunately arrived on one of the 6 days when the store closed after 11:30 a.m.

“I walked into the mudroom and I could see so many beautiful bits of ribbon and fabric through the locked door,” she said.

My son sent the above article from The New Maine News asking if this sounded familiar. [If you haven’t seen The NMN yet, check it out, Maine’s own Onion.]

Well, of course it sounded familiar; that could be Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs where these days egg customers have to push their way through a veil of heavy, reinforced plastic into a tent piled every which way with building supplies and smack in the middle the snow blower, then open new French doors where our sliding barn door used to be, clamber up into the barn (steps are missing) to the egg fridge. Only there are no eggs inside; they all froze right in the fridge when the subzero weather hit. A sign points to another new door leading into the shop; the eggs are on the right, on a pile of boxes. If there are any.

I might as well be that older couple watching TV behind locked doors. Home business indeed.

Yet the eggs continue to fly out of here; cars and pickups pull in to the driveway, or park precariously out on the road if the construction crew is here with their four or five pickups, and people make their way through the gauntlet of my shop entrance for those fresh eggs. It’s apparently way more fun than picking up a dozen at Hannaford’s.

What is it that’s appealing about a shop in someone’s home? Not appealing to everyone, as we learned early on, when back in about 1985 we hung out our first Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs sign. Our customers were mainly summer visitors, and we’d watch cars slow down, peering at the set-up – house and attached barn, no apparent “shop.” Many would speed up and drive by, obviously turning around as soon as they could, and we’d watch them heading back to the safety of Route 1.

The adventurous ones would pull in, figure out where the entrance was (we did have signs pointing the way) or one of us would take pity and come out to invite them in. Probably our brochure didn’t help much either: Open Daily by Chance it said. Once inside, especially if Wally was there, these visitors from another world (“Do you really cook on that woodstove?” they’d ask, having caught a glimpse of it through our kitchen door) would be drawn into our world for a few minutes.

He was a master at engaging complete strangers into discussions of almost anything – the garden, the chickens which he’d point out through the window, teaching, politics, kids-these-days. Sometimes they’d stay and talk with him for half an hour or more, telling him stuff about themselves, their spouses, their in-laws. Surprisingly personal stuff.

People don’t seem to have anyone to talk to these days, he’d say, remembering his older relatives whose idea of a vacation was a week off from work, sitting at the kitchen table in the run-down farmhouse in Friendship where his grandfather went to lobster every summer. They drank tea and talked all day, he said. No tennis dates, no shopping excursions, no schooner cruises. Of course, no money either.

Occasionally someone who should have driven on by pulled in, curious enough to see what this was about.  Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs has always been a somewhat funky place with a weird entrance, looms and boxes of rags everywhere, animal smells (especially when pigs lived underneath the shop) and always something simmering in the kitchen, with me running back and forth between the canner and the customer.

One hot summer day a woman came in, gave a quick look at the rugs, and asked if we had a bathroom. Duh.

So I led her through the kitchen, where the sink was piled high with half-plucked dead chickens. “Right through there, on the right,” I told her and went back to tweezing out pin feathers. She did her business and rushed past me and out the door without even a “thank you”. At least she had a story to tell.

This has been an interesting year for our shop. Most days I forgot to put out the Open flag until late afternoon, if then. If it was out I didn’t always notice when someone drove up, bent over a bed of lettuce or carrots, weeding, thinning, keeping busy. If D-I-L Tracee was around that day she go right inside and generally make a sale. One day Lucy and Maggie, 10 and 9 years old respectively, sold a rug and never even came looking for me.

So what’s the appeal of having a shop in your home? Of living on the other side of a door that opens to a space where the public is invited in? Of having people come into your barn, open the fridge, take what’s for sale in there – eggs, milk and butter back in the day, horseradish, garlic, raspberries, whatever we have a surplus of – and come by morning, noon or night, any day of the week?

We asked ourselves that from time to time. All we came up with was “it’s good to see people.” Good when you live in the country with no neighbors, though I count everyone between here and the Beach and Ducktrap and Stevens Corner as neighbors I can’t see their lights at night.

I’ve often said I dreamed up this place – house, barn, animals, gardens, greenhouse, forest, all of it – as a child, then watched it all come true as our life here unfolded. But the one part that didn’t was the long, long narrow road deep into the woods to my dream place. I never intended living on a busy paved road.

So, okay, Beach Road isn’t exactly a freeway; vehicles rarely pass here in the middle of the night, unlike nearby Atlantic Highway where you hear them at any hour. And except for rush hour (when the ferry is coming or going) there isn’t that much daytime traffic here either. But living on a main road makes it easy for drop-ins, be they friends or egg customers or just someone needing a bathroom.

The Street Light and Sidewalk Light Committee will be conducting a public input meeting Thursday, Jan. 18, 7 p.m. at the Town Office for residents and other interested parties to gather public input regarding the appropriateness of the current town owned sidewalk lights along U.S. Route 1 and the leased street lights located throughout Town.  What do you think about the need for lighting, the locations of lighting, additional locations, removals, relocations, intensity, hours of use, lighting color, aesthetics, energy usage, wasted light, dark skies, etc.  Any and all suggestions for improvements are welcome. The meeting will be televised over the Local Government Access Channel 22 on Lincolnville Networks.

 Time is running out to renew your dog licenses; the deadline is Jan. 31 when a state-mandated $25 fine kicks in, on top of the usual license fee of $7 for a neutered dog or $12 for an unaltered one. Do it at the Town Office or online.

In this week’s issue of the LCS newsletter, the Lynx:

Eighth graders will be choosing their high school courses with their parents on Feb. 6.

All grade 5-8 students in the HAL (Hope-Appleton-Lincolnville) area, including kids in private schools, are invited to join the CRMS (Camden-Rockport Middle School) wrestling team. The first practice will be Jan. 16 at the middle school cafeteria on Knowlton Street in Camden.

The Boys’ Night Out program that invites boys in grades 3, 4, and 5 in Knox County and Lincolnville to three nights with their dads, step-dads, uncles, or other significant men in their lives will be held Jan. 18, 25, and February 1 at PenBay YMCA.

A Chess Tournament is being held at the school Monday, Jan. 15.

For more detailed descriptions of these and other events at the school check out the Lynx. the school newsletter that is posted every Thursday during the school year.

 The Lincolnville Community Library book group will meet Tuesday, January 16 at 6 p.m. to discuss “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee. The novel tells the compelling stories of several generations of a Korean family beginning in the early 1900s. Everyone is welcome to join in the discussion and share ideas for other good books to read. 

 Wednesday, January 17 the Library Program will feature music only, with an appearance by John and Rachel Nicholas. The two have been making music together for over 30 years, performing with David Dodson, Dave Mallett, Patty Larkin, Chris Smithers, Paul Sullivan, Mary Gauthier and others throughout New England. This is the last Library program until April. Contact Rosey Gerry at 975-5432 to reserve seats, $10 each, proceeds benefit the Library.